Phil Mickelson won the first two PGA Tour Champions events he entered. He’ll try to make history next week when the tour visits Tucson.
Phil Mickelson won the first two PGA Tour Champions events he entered.
He’ll try to make history next week when the tour visits Tucson: no golfer has ever won the first three tournaments he entered on any of the PGA Tour-sanctioned tours.
On Friday, Mickelson beat the entry deadline and will tee it up in the Cologuard Classic at Omni Tucson National. Mickelson confirmed to Golfweek via text that he will be playing in the event.
In many regards, he’ll be on familiar turf, as the former Arizona State standout has made many visits to Tucson over the years.
In 1991, Mickelson won the Northern Telecom Open in Tucson as an amateur. He remains the last amateur to win a PGA Tour event. In November, he teamed up with Charles Barkley at Stone Canyon Club to defeat Peyton Manning and Steph Curry in the Match III.
In college Mickelson’s ASU team had several battles with in-state rival Arizona, a team with Jim Furyk on its roster. Furyk has also committed to the Cologuard and will be playing it for the first time, having turned 50 after the 2020 version took place.
In 1992, Furyk and his Wildcats won the program’s first team national title at the University of New Mexico golf course, and had to deal with ASU a few times along the way.
“That year, the two best teams in college golf were Arizona and Arizona State,” Furyk said on Wednesday after a practice round at the Genesis Invitational near Los Angeles. “We battled them out in Regionals and then battled them in the NC-2-As, so to beat your rival, a team that had Phil Mickelson, at the time the best college player in the country … to battle them and win the national championship. … yea a lot of good memories.”
Furyk also won his first two times out on the Champions tour but Mickelson will look to one-up him.
“He won at three individual (NCAA) titles and they (ASU) also won a team title while he was in school, so I think he’s kinda upped me a little there,” said Fuyrk. “It’s tough to dig in and needle on that one.”
Former major league pitcher John Smoltz is also in the field. He’ll play the event for the third year in a row on a sponsor exemption. Bernhard Langer is the defending champion.
Bernhard Langer came from four shots back to win the Cologuard Classic title on Sunday.
Bernhard Langer remains the force that all senior players must overcome if they want to win a PGA Tour Champions title. On Sunday, the German came from four shots back to win the Cologuard Classic. By the end of the final round at Tucson National’s Catalina Course, he was 18 under and two shots ahead of runner-up Woody Austin.
The victory represents Langer’s 41st title on the senior tour. Langer, 62, is now only four victories short of all-time leader Hale Irwin.
Langer has played the Cologuard Classic five times, but this is his first win in an event where he feels like the venue fits him.
“I feel somewhat comfortable around this golf course,” he said. “It probably suits a high ball, hit it with a lot of spin because some of the greens are usually fairly firm and some of the pins are tucked behind a bunker by three yards or so and you’ve got to stop it. You know, I’m not known for that, but I can spin the ball enough to compete if I play well.”
Langer got off to a hot start with birdies on his first three holes. He added two more at Nos. 7 and 8 then sprinkled four more over the back nine before making a bogey at No. 18 that left him with an 8-under 65. By that time, it didn’t matter much. There was no catching him.
With the wins still coming now despite being in his 60s, Langer had much to say on the topic of confidence.
“Confidence is a huge part of golf, we all know that, so it’s always great to win or be happy about your game, feel like you’re close or you’re on top of it,” he said. “I still feel if I can play my best, I have a chance to win out here. But I have to play my best, I can’t play at 80 percent, there’s too many really good players nowadays that just will lap me if I don’t play my very best.”
Brett Quigley was chasing his second PGA Tour Champions title in four starts. The 50-year-old just became eligible for the senior tour. After a nearly flawless start to the tournament – he had just one bogey in opening rounds of 64-68 – Quigley’s third round was much different. He got through the front nine easily enough with two birdies and six pars but bogeyed the 10th and double-bogeyed the 12th. That effectively derailed his day.
A final-round 73 left Quigley at 14 under, in a share of third with Rod Pampling.
Steve Stricker, Fred Couples and Miguel Angel Jimenez were all another shot back in a share of fifth.
For Quigley, the near misses provide learning experiences just as much as his win earlier this year in Morocco did.
“You just keep hitting shots and shoot as low as you can because you never know what’s going to happen,” he said when asked what he had learned in Tucson.
Brett Quigley backed up an opening 64 at Tucson National’s Catalina Course with a second-round 68 and leads by two at the Cologuard Classic.
Brett Quigley moved a little bit closer on Saturday to padding his professional win column. That’s significant for the 50-year-old who won his first PGA Tour Champions title earlier this year in just his second start on the senior tour. Quigley had five runner-up finishes in 408 starts on the PGA Tour but never was a champion.
Quigley backed up an opening 64 at Tucson National’s Catalina Course with a second-round 68 and now leads by two shots at the Cologuard Classic.
Quigley nearly went bogey-free for a second day. He didn’t have a blemish on his card in the first round, but his sole bogey of the second round came at the par-4 11th.
“To back up yesterday’s round with a pretty good round today, 5 under,” Quigley said. “Hard to keep track of par out here with 73 being par. I think it was 5 under. A little off the back nine, but managed to shoot under par, so certainly happy overall.”
Quigley leads Fred Couples by two shots after Couples backed up an opening 68 with 66. Miguel Angel Jimenez and Rod Pampling are tied for third at 11 under.
John Daly dropped seven spots on the leaderboard with his Saturday 71 and now is in a share of 10th at 8 under.
Couples, 60, calls Quigley “the kid.” Asked what he thinks of that, Quigley said he was not unhappy to have the nickname.
“Certainly I feel like a newbie again, definitely a neophyte out here. It’s against all the guys I grew up playing with and a lot of guys I grew up watching, so it’s fun.”
Quigley and Couples, along with Jimenez, will be paired together in Sunday’s final group.
Brett Quigley opened the Cologuard Classic with a 9-under 64 at Tucson National’s Catalina Course and has a one-shot lead.
Earlier this year, Brett Quigley won his first PGA Tour Champions title in just his second start on the senior tour. After Friday’s opening round on the Cologuard Classic, he’s in position to chase another title. Quigley opened with a 9-under 64 at Tucson National’s Catalina Course and has a one-shot lead on Robert Karlsson.
Quigley’s card didn’t have a single bogey on it. His back nine was particularly impressive, considering he went 6 under in his last seven holes. That included four birdies in a row from Nos. 12-15.
“I think I was 3 under and I saw someone 6,” he said. “I was like, `All right, I’ve got to get going here. I’ve just got to make some birdies.’ Hit some good shots and made some good putts and all of a sudden it was a bunch of birdies.”
Karlsson made five back-nine birdies in a 65. The 50-year-old Swede is making his second career start on the senior tour. He tied for 23rd two weeks ago in the Chubb Classic in his senior debut.
Steve Stricker, John Daly, Glen Day and Rod Pampling shot 67. Hall of Famers Fred Couples and Bernhard Langer were another stroke back along with Ken Tanigawa.
Quigley, the nephew of 11-time PGA Tour Champions winner Dana Quigley, had five runner-up finishes in 408 starts on the PGA Tour and earned more than $11 million. Asked what had changed since his recent win in Morocco, he responded “nothing and everything.”
“It’s such a great atmosphere out here,” Quigley said. “The camaraderie’s just different than the tour. Everybody still calls me ‘Champ’ out here, walking by. It’s just a nice feeling. It’s not as dog eat dog as it is out there on the big tour. And I’ve had a bunch of time off, so I’m ready to play golf and I’m happy playing golf.”
Daly, for his part, credited his putter for his solid opening round. He also put a new set of irons in play recently.
Asked to describe the state of his game coming into the week, Daly referenced solid ball-striking at the tour’s last stop in Naples that wasn’t reflected in his scoring.
“Here I hit it pretty good and scored pretty good besides making a few putts,” he said. “But I like the way I’m hitting the ball. If you can hit fairways and wedge up some pretty close, and getting a few gimmes here and there always helps, too.”
After more than 1,100 career starts in his illustrious career, Hall of Famer Tom Kite pens his first letter asking for a sponsor’s exemption. Allow us to explain.
What is a World Golf Hall of Famer with 19 PGA Tour victories, more than $27 million in earnings and more than 1,100 career combined starts as a professional doing asking for a sponsor invite into the PGA Tour Champions Cologuard Classic in Tucson, Arizona, this week?
Good question. Tom Kite, the golfer in question, provided me the answer.
“I failed the tour’s playing standard regulation last year because of how poorly I played,” he said.
There’s a playing standard on the senior circuit? Who knew? Here’s the actual language of this arcane rule that was implemented roughly 20 years ago, according to the PGA Tour Champions.
“Upon the conclusion of the season, any player who has played a minimum of six official rounds and played in a minimum of three tournaments shall have maintained a scoring average for all rounds played by such player during the previous year in tournaments awarding official money no higher than four and one-half (4.5) strokes in excess of the average score for all players in such tournaments.”
There’s two opposing schools of thought on this: you either think this rule is a joke and Kite is an all-time great, a name golf fans still care to pay money to see and he deserves our admiration that he’s still grinding and should be allowed to go out on his terms. Or you think this is a reasonable rule meant to protect the quality of the field and would tell Kite, ‘C’mon, old man, your time has passed,’ and, in what is very much a closed shop, you’re taking a spot from a more worthy player.
Kite, 70, has played in 426 senior tournaments since turning 50 in December 1999 and racked up 10 wins, 125 top-10 finishes and more than $14 million. But last season he played just 11 tournaments and earned $26,476. And, for our purposes here, the bigger problem was his scoring average in ‘19: 76.148, which was a differential of 4.847 compared to the fields he played against, so that’s how he missed the 4.5 stroke average.
Tom Kite won 19 times on the PGA Tour and 16 times on PGA Tour Champions.
Kite’s final tournament in 2019 was the Pure Insurance Championship at Pebble Beach, where he won his lone major in 1992. He shot his age, 69, in his first round but followed it up with a 79 at Poppy Hills Golf Course.
“I forgot about the rule,” Kite said. “I could’ve signed my scorecard incorrectly or not signed it at all and been DQed and still have my status.”
Here’s more on the rule affecting Kite’s status this season.
“Any such player failing to meet the guidelines set forth in this Section C.1(a) of this Article III shall retain regular membership but for subsequent seasons shall no longer be exempt. The scoring average portion of the Performance Guidelines shall not be applicable for those members who have a minimum of 50 combined (PGA TOUR and PGA TOUR Champions) victories in tournaments awarding official money, or players in the All-Time Victory Category A.1 (i)(i). There shall be no other exemption from this scoring average provision of the Performance Guidelines.”
The bar is set so high for a “get out of jail card” – a combined 50 wins between the tour’s junior and senior circuits – too high, you could argue, that even stalwart Bernhard Langer wouldn’t meet it. (Hale Irwin is one of the few, the proud, who does.)
But Kite didn’t complain about being in this no-man’s land to start the season. In fact, he said, “I endorse the policy 100%.”
At age 69, after 1132 combined starts on the @PGATOUR and @ChampionsTour, Tom Kite is the last man standing on the range at the @CologuardGolf Classic.
As a result, Kite sent his first letter requesting a sponsor exemption to tournament officials at the Tucson tournament, which begins Friday.
Fifty years ago this June, Kite made his PGA Tour debut at the U.S. Open at Hazeltine. He passed Tour Q-School in his first attempt and made it through Monday Qualifying initially. Never did he have to ask for a handout. Well, there was one time he accepted a sponsor exemption into the old Crosby Clambake, but that was arranged by his amateur partner.
Part of the reason Kite may have accepted having his exempt status suspended – technically, he qualifies through the all-time points, all-time money and Hall of Fame categories – is that he can receive unlimited sponsor exemptions. He already has another one lined up for the Hoag Classic next week in Newport Beach, California, and then he will re-assess his plans. And there’s also this:
“A player who loses his exempt status for failing to meet the scoring average provision of the Performance Guidelines may regain exempt status immediately by finishing among the top one-half (1/2) of the starting field in any PGA Tour Champions cosponsored or approved tournament awarding official prize money, excluding official money team events.”
In other words, if he can finish inside the top half of an official, non-team event – top-39 or better this week – his status will be reinstated. It’s not a high bar and one Kite is confident he can achieve.
“I know I’m at the end of my rope,” he said. “I don’t have any super-high aspirations other than to see the guys and compete and get my status back. I didn’t play worth a darn last year, but you know what? I’m still a pretty good player.”
